


trompe-l'œil

by x_x



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Au of sorts, Child Abuse, M/M, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 00:02:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20330710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_x/pseuds/x_x
Summary: Eventually, Lupin will find out what the ringing means.





	trompe-l'œil

It's overwhelming sometimes.

Everything bisects over and over unto itself, like a pie-cut rhythm traveling down an asymptope, until the pieces turn into slivers-- and the slivers into mush if it's really bad, but he hasn't let it get to that point in a while. He can rebuild from the white-hot wires of sketchwork, the fault lines that intersect at a clustered nebula of the kaleidoscope that becomes his vision and shoots rainbow strobes throughout the entire length of his nervous system. But at the lowest octave of its depth is a blinding mess of mire and splash and whistling streaks and _ too much _. It possesses the tendency to move like his father, if Lupin does let it get to that point(, if the slivers turn to mush), battering the walls in poison spitfire and fumes that used to smother Lupin so that he could only breathe Japanese for days.

But the ringing-- the ringing pulls him out of frame, out of these smears.

The ringing cradles him.

At its slightest, it's something like a translucent veil, a security blanket that wraps over him simply enough so that he can remind himself of its presence as the rest of everything folds over.

But when the smears are safe, when there's a balance of shape and form, they play like an enhancement, a cheat-sheet exposing all the world's best secrets to him, and all he has to do is know the ringing in the air to know. So he seeks, into danger, trusting inanity, leaping across the foreboding **lie**{n}s…. And it gets tricky, see, mixing the colors correctly, just enough to that the picture is still distinct, so that nothing smears. That's how he can taste the ringing the most distinctly. Even when there's only mess, the ringing covers all that, coating it with-- something like a light dusting of flower petals in its wake-- like the mellow white-noise effect of falling rain-- pushing the smears into form, into something better than all of it could perhaps ever be.

"What does it sound like?" Pépère had once asked, because he hadn't understood. He wasn't ever able to understand in the end, but he never stopped gently prying like he could someday.

Not that Lupin, maybe eleven at the time, had known how best to explain that it wasn't actually a sound, but a _ sense _ in itself. Like the last millimeter of space between a falling plate and a broken future. Like the gaps felt out between strands of wind. Like remembering to remember a good dream upon waking up.

"Loud."

"Just loud?"

Lupin was grasping at the tendrils of it with his heart as he curled into himself under the covers, savoring what little of it remained while his father's echoes clawed at his backside. "Loud enough so that he's not."

Some memories are so strong that they find him when the ringing does. The jellyfish from the aquarium he remembers being taken to when he was very small. The books in the old estate's library, crisp and dusty. An old portrait in a room he wasn't supposed to go into. The woolly sheep he'd visit, hopping fences of the surrounding farmland whenever he snuck out and wandered the roads. How the night sky looked from the Aoraki Mackenzie reserve in the late summer when he left home for good.

They're constants, floating in and out of every scene, and Lupin feels less alone than he actually is, more at home anywhere else in the world than that dark place he turned his back to.

(And there, just over his shoulder, are other memories too, strong enough to find him when the ringing grows di**s** ta **l** n **i** t **v ers to mush**.)

Key point: thoughts are like paint that never dries.

They smear and smudge and mix and connect and form shapes, and create an entirely different picture that replaces what is supposedly truly there. And it can be fun-- like earlier today, when Lupin was throwing himself in a pit of plastic, multicolored balls when there otherwise might have been a lumpy mattress. Or now, when he's begun to realize that's it a bottle of spirytus in his hand (opened and a bit drunken into, buuut only a _ teeny _ bit) rather than what he thought had been a handy-dandy assault rifle (initially perceived thanks to the vodka no doubt, but he _ did _ have the rifle one or four days ago, before dumping it to stay travel-light and trail-free since he knew this group was tailing him, oh yeah how could he _ forget that _ ? (Right, the vodka, shit, _ okay _.)).

Mix-ups like this aren't typically a huge deal. But it sure makes or breaks a good time when there are rotten tomatoes raining down all around him (definitely not tomatoes), and a tough crowd booing him (definitely more than booing) him off stage when he's seriously screwed up his act (and okay, that one actually holds true so he'll take it).

On the glitzy side, it's times like these that make him damn good at improvising.

A sheep is gnawing at his sleeve.

Lupin rips the fabric. And one flick of a match later, the bottle becomes a molotov, sailing across space like a shooting star. Stage lighting erupts for the finale.

The crowd goes _ wild _ with screams.

Key point 2: the Second screwed with him. A _ lot _. After a while, he'd contradict himself too much for Lupin to continue to buy into the words (see: "your brain is shit because you don't heed proper instruction" vs. "your brain is shit because you rely too much on instruction"), but as a kid, that kind of thing still affected him no matter how much it didn't make sense. After all, when the ocean air tastes of candied apple, and the music from the country he'd left months ago can still splash him red, yellow, blue, and all the permuations between, what rule could exist that deemed he couldn't be stupid for two mutually exclusive reasons?

It's Schrodinger's say as to whether or not the Second can ever change, but then, here he stands in Lupin's path with a gun pointed not directly at him but right at what might as well have been Lupin's **heart**, the hallway of the old estate gaping behind him. Some imprints run too deep to ever smooth out.

Lupin needs to take care to remember that he is in Abidjan.

They speak French here, and it's been throwing him off, making the ringing waver.

But he _ is _ in Abidjan.

"Is that you?" he finds himself asking, every fibre in his arm charged rigid with the most precise way of unholstering his walther. "Pa? Are you here?"

Dawn is breaking, and the ringing slits his father open. Lupin stands his ground as sewage moans out and begins contaminating everything it touches. The First's abandoned estate will remain dehiscent for a while yet-- wine carpet spilling like a reaching tongue over the concrete, and corridors stretching excessively within the crowded crook of street-- but Lupin can casually outstep its pace these days, outlast its pressure, until the leak finally clots itself. From the indefinite, far end of the hall, he hears a "yes" bleed out.

Lupin slouches in relief.

He catches sight of the jellies passing overhead, eastbound. He skips across Aoraki's stars alongside the sheep until the ringing becomes more than a slit again.

No one else has harbored much appreciation for the ringing.

Not that they can even know it, but they definitely haven't reacted well when Lupin goes to pick up where it is loudest, no matter how well the endgame turnout is. Profanities get filtered out by the mewl of kittens, but enough lambasting reaches past that Lupin has to digest them in pi ec es. They've labeled it everything from 'pure, dumb luck' to 'high-functioning psychosis'. The ringing leads him away from them.

It leads him to Daisuke Jigen, who is oddly unfazed by Lupin's idiosyncrasies. Lupin's more careful about who and how much of himself he reveals to other people at this point, but Jigen has a good eye that catches everything anyway. The best sharpshooter of the underground just shrugs and says that he's seen worse and weirder. He cooks. He reminds Lupin what time of night it is. He pulls Lupin back from ledges where Lupin assumed there was flat ground ("Be real straight with me, man, is this gonna be a friggin' problem with you?" "I'm not _ trying _ to die, alright?!"). He lights Lupin's cigarettes. He does all sorts of things that aren't all that necessary, that according to Jigen actually are to _ normal _ people, that he does for Lupin too, and that part Lupin is pretty sure is _ entirely _ unnecessary, but he can't bring himself to bring it up lest he break the spell and end all the magic that Jigen calls "being a grown-ass adult-- you oughtta try it sometime". Nonetheless, the ringing seems to follow Jigen, so Lupin does too, to the former's chagrin.

When Fujiko Mine makes her debut, the ringing seems to peak, but it fluctuates more than it ever had too. Fujiko is razor blades in birthday cake layers; she sinks into him as he sinks into her. Lupin wants all that she is immediately, even when colors begin bleeding from their boundaries, and cold becomes hot and hot becomes soaring but the sky becomes ground, and constantly he's falling and she's smiling, and as she smiles the entire sparkly galaxy appropriately shifts its center. It's _ so _ much trouble ("More trouble than she's worth," Jigen cautions him.), but in glimpses between the stitches of her woven havoc, he can grasp the ringing like never before, and the payoff is in the game itself. She regards him with similar fascination (and likely much less preoccupation on her part), and-- this woman he's already seen in various states of nonchalant undress, suddenly timid like she's exposing herself for the very first time-- she says, "You know…you're pretty fun." She's gone the next morning, but then, they keep running into her after that. It takes Lupin a few times before he realizes that's her way of sticking around.

After a while, Lupin forgets what **mush** feels like. The slivers still happen, but it's more like they get indefinitely smaller, but in a distant way rather than a crushing, crowding way. He'll still see scraps of the old estate every now and then, but more often does he sneeze from dusty books that aren't there and lose himself in the pitch of dark New Zealand sky. He waves his arms to attract the jellies his way. The sheep group around him at night and cuddle.

He knows Jigen and Fujiko watch him. But neither make any comment, and both seem to be okay with it.

And somehow, that's what makes it...okay to be.

(Because, there was a time when it

wasn't. At all. When coins filled up his

nose and lined his throat and spilled through

his teeth, and all that he saw tasted of grime and

green, and jagged patterns pressing stern reminders

into all the places that already had them for as long

as Lupin could remember, patterns into patterns,

feelings into feelings of mire and splash and

whistling streaks and _ some imprints run too _

_ deep _, smothering him so that he couldn't

scream, blinding, a mess. He

found a space in

himself, a

corner where

he dragged each

piece of him and folded

all of it up, compressed

it flat, just enough so

that the smears couldn't touch. He made

a line that the kaleidoscope couldn't

breach, only it did, over and

over as the patterns sunk to his bones

and rattled them until he couldn't move

them on his own. Desperate, he made more

lines. Bisecting into slivers-- He barely fit as it was.

There was no space left for the ringing. --slivers into

m u s h.

That was then.)

This is now: Sliding fast behind giant ABC building blocks-- uhhh,_ crates _ (he thinks?)-- at a warehouse in the outskirts of Havana. Lupin pushes a fresh crash dummy-- courtesy of Fujiko-- off of (what presents as a treasure chest but should really be) a weapon's cache as said best lady and Jigen skid in to flank him. They all flinch in unison as the top corner of their B block gets splintered off by a torrent of gumballs. The cache opens and inside…. A banana bunch, a belt decorated with a bunch of oversized chess pieces, and a bassoon. While Lupin contemplates what they're actually working with, Fujiko already claims the bananas, and Jigen helps himself to the bassoon. As Lupin tentatively clips the belt around his hips, he notices the chess pieces are all knights. Okeydokey.

A thrash-paced hardbop track is blaring, and the drumline hammers rapidly into the crates around them. Fujiko and Jigen return fire best they can, but their parts are heavily cut and it shows in the difference between the notes they play and the ones they hold mute. Not much opportunity for them to shine with this sequence.

But the ringing steady and constant in Lupin's gut. It lulls him towards the middle of the warehouse, which is the absolute worst place to be since dead center welcomes fire from all angles, _ but _ it's also the quickest route to what they came here for.

Lupin naturally wants to give chase.

"It sounds like a gamble," Fujiko insists, her expression a portrayal of prim apathy. Though, there's a daisy sticking from her head that wilts now and betrays the facade. "High-stakes, at that."

"Let's be optimistic and call it an educated guess."

"That's still _ gambling _." Jigen scratches his head, he hurriedly slots a several new rounds into the tall bassoon. A muscle in his jaw goes taut. "But you're not gonna listen, are you?"

"Now, now. I'm always listening." Lupin grins as the ringing washes over him again. "And it's _ loud _."

Jigen knows about it, but he doesn't get it. It still puts him ahead of Fujiko, who neither gets it nor knows yet, whose eyes widen in alarm as he props the bassoon back over his shoulder. "Stay low, don't stray from cover--"

"Brush twice a day, wipe front to back…. Anything else, dear?" He barely dodges a swipe Jigen takes at his head.

"Yeah, get bent." But there's a smile he's trying to hide underneath his hat as he quickly turns away. "On your lead, you maniac."

The ringing's so strong now, Lupin feels the hairs on the back of his neck raise. The ground desaturates to black and white-- a checkered board. Jigen gains a ridged helm around his hat, all the part of a rook.

"This couldn't possibly be more gauche," Fujiko sighs, but a queen's diadem appears over her head just the same and Lupin knows she's one of the set already as she clips a new banana to the bundle in her manicured hands. "That mirror's still _ my _ claim, by the way."

Neither of them are touched by the ringing, but they watch him closely, and it's just as good as if they were following it firsthand. It opens up, like the binding of a new book being creased flat for the first time-- and Lupin lurches sideways, out from the safety of the block and pulls a chess piece from his belt, tugging a pin from the horse's pierced nostrils before he tosses it ahead.

_ Knight to C-4. _

It bursts into confetti and glitter, rips apart a crash dummy just beyond the next corner. But the intense blast is contained to a tiny radius (ah-ha, so they're just minis then, perfect for the cramped space), allowing Lupin to run through the residual colored dust in its wake just a few counts later.

The opposing pieces begin gliding forward to meet him. Pawns, all of them. They're struck down by Fujiko's vast field of burst fire; she shadows Lupin's path distantly, only close enough to catch better vantage of the pieces that try to interrupt him. Others are knocked from their advance by Jigen's straight shot; he hangs back, keeping a big-picture perspective to track both Lupin and Fujiko's six. And in between their cover fire, Lupin crosses deep across the squared grid, lighting the way with the explosives at his waist and moving in L-shapes around the crates.

_ L for Lupin, _ he delights with morbid conceit as he dashes past charred limbs and groaning crash dummies.

He's sweats the bass, swings his body within the saxophone riff, heart beating in time to the flurry of the piano's crescendo. Confetti whisks around him, but the glitter stays stuck to his vision as if caught on the pane of his eyes and the grit of it can be felt between the clench of his teeth. It's a victory parade! The notes begin jumbling wildly, cramming together, but he's perfectly in time. He knows the dance.

He leaps over the next crate, breaking fortississimo…

…but it sours.

As his feet hit frost-covered ground, his blood congeals with the freeze, cutting off all further mobility. The parade colors all abruptly drop to the ground as blackened soot.

In front of him is the case they've been after. But there is a logo on it. Memories surface from the mire of Lupin's mind, slopping off and soiling his clothes, and he's convinced that it must be a mistake. He blinks to clear his eyes, but the ringing continues to dim.

The logo remains: Two symmetrical faces nose-to-nose, the space between them forming a vase. And they recognize him for who he is immediately.

The twin faces warp, turning to him simultaneously to greet him, and their smiles open to the unlit entrance hall of the estate. (The ringing swings far away-- gone.) A draft crawls over his skin and tugs Lupin inward of the hall, and all the blood in him tells him there's no use running. The carpet stretches out at his toes, creeping under his soles and curling around his ankles. The twins continue shifting, tongues joinging into the Second's silhouette, stepping towards him. A gun soon gains its own shape.

_ No. No, wait, this isn't…. _

Lupin's feet are held fast to the ground by the ice, the freeze crawling steadily around his heart. Lupin grasps for his belt, only to find nothing hanging there. The knight is out of moves. He calls out unsteadily, so caught off guard as he tries to wring his feet free by force. "Is that you? Pa--?"

He only just realizes a pawn gliding to the side of him, in perfect position to take a trapped knight.

But the rook has just ended his own turn, reads the situation too late, and fruitlessly shouts Lupin's name. And as much as she tries to angle as close as possible to take the threat down, there are some trick angles beyond even the queen's range.

With a startling crash, the window above Lupin shatters, showering him with falling glass as something hurtles through. As if riding on a pendulum swing, the ringing is back in full force as Lupin glimpses through the raining shine falling upon him.

At first, he thinks he sees a bishop in the motion blur of a diagonal slash-- until the air peels away like wallpaper and a man tears the illusion apart. Around him, everything splits into ribbons. The chess board floor, the building blocks, the gaping mansion with the shape of the Second inside, even the music track is whisked away by the resounding gust, all of it unfurled like curling rinds, the ending arcs centered on the pawn to Lupin's left. It falls an actual corpse.

The man lands his spin, robes billowing over straw sandals, and all of him sings with moonlight. Under the painted swirl of ink black hair, he glows pale as the shining hymn underneath the fresh blood on his blade's edge. The ribbons fall around them in a spiral at their feet before evanescing completely, blown away from existence.

Lupin is able to process somewhere behind his dumbstruck gawking that he's staring at a _ samurai _. And as if its only filters have fallen, the ringing is no longer contained in itself, but wholly overriding Lupin's perception. The smoke and blood that Lupin has been breathing coat his lungs and mouth-- jarringly stark as taste and scent meet in his throat. The bite of cold air from the outside flooding in through the broken window strikes a dizzy contrast with his fire-baked skin. The sword is howling with reverberation of the kill, tickling from one ear drum to the other and back again.

All of it, thrilling and brilliant and l o u d and simply

** _R I N G I N G._ **

The samurai declares, somewhat mournfully, "Once again, I have cut a worthless object."

(Like the first drop of rain to hit bare skin. Like passing a streetlight just as it happens to go dark. Like reaching out and expecting to touch glass, only to find open space.)

"Arsène Lupin the Third," the samurai addresses him now.

"Speaking?" Lupin responds, throat dry and attention utterly _ captive _ as the ringing pokes holes into his attention span.

"Know me as Goemon Ishikawa the Thirteenth." Eyes, dark and tempered, narrow at him. The sword twists its curved gleam upwards, matching the scowl on the man's otherwise stoic features. His voice grates out, "I will be the one to determine your worth hereabouts, with a _ cut _."

This is how Lupin first meets Goemon.

And, oh, the thing about Goemon--

The jellyfish had begun grouping around the far corner. At one of the high shelves.

He normally didn't bother with the ones outside his reach, since he knew that eventually he'd grow tall enough to reach them, and anyway there was plenty material along the bottom shelves to flip through until then. But in that far east side of the library, a titled spine stood out, letters glinting like bells against the light cast by the rising sun.

After learning to read, he'd worked his comprehension into German, then English, and then Italian…. But the letters on the spide of this book weren't even close to resembling those alphabets that all somewhat resembled each other. Lupin had no idea how to sound them out.

He climbed.

The books there were among the very most dusty in the estate's library, the coating of unuse like powdered sugar. He sneezed on the sweetness several times on the way up, fingers clinging fast to the creaking woodgrain as he shook precariously so far above the hard floor. He nearly slipped completely off at one point, causing all the sheep below to bleat in alarm. But the higher he climbed, the more sunflowers bloomed from the shelf to greet him, until he reached all the jellies dancing in circles around the indicated space. There, the sunflowers lined the whole nook, brimming out between each text.

The book that had caught his eye was the heaviest, but he was able to slide it out far enough to peer at the cover. Even the art was entirely different in style to the kind he was used to seeing: a fierce-faced man brandishing a curved, single-edged sword.

The ringing thrummed pink and yellow in his chest.

This entire shelf was a collection of those books printed with the same strange alphabet. A series of them appeared to teach French from the source language. Most the rest of the books were chaptered fiction novels, each worn and dogeared, warm as if left outside for a whole summer afternoon. The remainder looked like…children's books, all cartoon pictures and extra-large multicolored print, but unused and cold from abandon.

He pulled them all, colors bursting out and smattering the area bright with the resounding thuds as the books fell below.

And once Lupin climbed down and poured into the tomes, the ringing got _ loud _ suddenly. Rainbow starlight, it moved his fingers and eyes. The ringing guided him through every page, spurring him as the letters became pattern enough to form words, louder still as the words pulled together into sentences, flowing up and down his limbs and around the candle flame he had to light as he poured more and more of himself into the night, skipping stones off his tongue and setting off ripples of kanji and kana into a flow of colors around him.

"Who taught you this?" the Second whispered when Lupin went skipping stones without checking his shadows. Tightly-coiled, incandescent French clamped down onto his dewy, fragile world. "Your grandfather?"

He responded in the newfound taboo, "I did, myself." He could feel past imprints floating up from the deep and pushing against his skin from below, calling apprehension towards the future imprints that would back into them from above.

"Do not do that."

And the ringing gained traction within him. "Why _ not _?"

"I said _ stop it _."

"I want a reason!"

It was like throwing cool water over burning coals, and the rising steams hissed viciously between them. But the shapes obscured behind these misty curtains were falling cherry blossoms, renderings in ukiyo-e, the humbled might of unwavering figures in flowing robes, blades being peeled from their sheaths-- and the r i n g i n g pulsed it all to life, to push and pull, to moving current. He could _ breathe _ it.

Lupin raised his voice to match the rising tides: "This what _ she _ spoke, isn't it? I'm gonna speak it, too! Why are you so scared? There's nothing wrong with--"

In the end,

there wasn't nearly enough cool water to hush the clutching, scalding French-- barely French, beyond French, because Pépère's French was wonderful and this wasn't anything like it-- branded (imprinted deep) into him that night.

He had the l

i

n

e

s

drawn.

** . . .. . … . . .. . ...**

P a tt e rns into f e el i ngs.

Sli ve r s,

thin and fine.

Too _ much _.

** . . .. . … . . .. . ...**

Folded himself up, neatly.

And he [sent the (what he had of _ her _) ringing away]*, just for a little while, just to keep it safe. Before it could become

** . . .. . … . . .. . ...**

**mush.**

The thing about Goemon is that he's got a sword that can cut through _ anything _.

Lupin throws himself low to dodge, but the entire rear wall of the warehouse-- steel beams and iron sheeting, as if it were all paper and popsicle sticks-- falls to pieces, and the ringing shreds through him like a retort. Scraps and sensations try to pull back together over Lupin's eyes, but they too fall way to the swinging blade. Lupin loses himself in the loudness, dumbfounded as there's no rhythm to carry him, no pathways lighting up, no fanfare coaxing him. He just sees the sword, and its bearer.

And by himself-- like he's just dropped weighted shackles, like he can finally truly _ move _\-- he dodges again. And again.

Everything that greets him is muted yet hyperreal at the same time. Opposite of a lucid dream, and instead Lupin is the imagined figment and the rest of the world is awakening to his illusion-- he swallows down the wave of vertigo coating his throat, but he can't help but take it all in. And he takes it all _ in _. The true sun's blinding bite on his eyes. The way his clothes stick to the sweat on his skin. The sound of his foot sliding across ground as he scrambles, contrasting with the curt steps of trained gait following him. The relentless steel in pursuit, flashing glimpses of finality. There's nothing else except Lupin, Goemon, and the closing space between them.

Their breaths ebb together, pass back and forth. Lupin catches Goemon's gaze and is astonished to find nothing in the latter's stare, except a heated, razor-fine focus trained on _ him _ alone, that raises every single pore on his skin. (What does Goemon see in him? Lupin is desperate to know.) Goemon's eyes narrow as if sensing Lupin's scrutiny, just before his sword rips the air between them once more.

"Honorably accept death's embrace!" Goemon dictates in frustration as Lupin slips beyond reach again, and again.

"Let death know that I'm flattered, but not interested!" Despite his disorientation, Lupin can't help himself. Each breath is so coarse, wintry, he chokes on each inhale. He pulls more in. Raw and painful, and none of it smears. The ringing is piercing through every hairline pinched into dermis, burning through, burning out. He laughs, breathless and helpless and _ full _.

Something flickers across Goemon's features but he regains his resolve in an instant.

In a burst of motion, his leg darts just beyond Lupin's next step, sweeping away the latter's sense of balance. Even as he's sent sprawling, wind knocked out of him, the splashes of color are brief, immediately peeled away as Goemon's heel pins his chest in place. The tip of his sword lowers to Lupin's throat. Lupin gasps for air, only to find himself gazing not at the dark silhouette looming over him, but beyond that, up at the sky beyond. The actual sky. Not Aoraki. No dripping punchbowl glow, endless blended reflections of the world, the feeling of laying face first in fresh bedding.

Merely…

"What is it that distracts you from your own demise?" Goemon sounds distant, but there's bewilderment to it, like he's not sure what he's seeing either. Lupin wonders if he's seen what's above as well, but he seems to only be looking at Lupin.

"Is the sky _ always _ blue?" Lupin shakily reaches out to touch it. It's somehow too far to smear. Much farther than he'd ever been aware of before, and the wonder of it startles a smile from him.

In the edge of his consciousness, the blade above him falters slightly.

But then, he's slipping away.

Into the terrifying, glorious, foreign stillness of dark.

* [The ringing **a** lways came back. It wou **l** d sometimes take what felt **l** ike forever, sometimes not until everyth **i** ng was thoroughly wrecked a **n** d misplaced, and Lupin's pieces would b **e** stiff and cramped from being fold **e** d up for so long. But eventually, the ringing woul **d** find him again, spread through h **i** m not unlike a bloodrush, warding the mu **s** h away, cleaning him off and willing his bones to move beyond the raw patterns, awakening him like **this** reverse lullaby.]

Fujiko admits to wildly tackling Goemon from a full-speed sprint, sending both of them sprawling. Jigen admits to having been a hair's breadth of a trigger-pull away from lodging a sniper round through Goemon's skull. And Goemon-- the most surprising of all-- had admitted to already having been in the action of lowering his sword; he's gone by the time Lupin awakes, though.

Fujiko and Jigen won't say anything else on that matter, despite how much Lupin feels left out from the great spectacle, though both look oddly uncomfortable, as if he's asking them to confess secrets they hadn't realized they were keeping. But even on limited information, the sheep are practically dog-piling Lupin with how much they've crowded around him, all nipping at his clothes and ears, squeezing him between them, and the squeezing sensation focuses most around his chest. And that's the end of that job.

For Fujiko, her new mirror is enough. For Jigen, the payout is enough. For Lupin, the job in and of itself should have been enough, but there's a disconcerting sense of something _ more _ that kindles him from feeling too accomplished.

What had been enough for Goemon, that he left without taking Lupin's life, as intended? Lupin watches the horizon curl into something like a tunnel, telling him the way.

"Hey," Jigen says, after Fujiko has already evanesced into a trail of fairy dust. "If you hit a rough patch, call me."

Lupin has to snort. "Not all my leads are paid, you know."

"I'm not talking about pay. You got that shit-eating grin on your face, so I'm _ saying _ , if you hit a rough patch, _ call me _."

Lupin wants to hit him with some joke about jealousy, but once again, Jigen has that uncomfortable look about him that he doesn't want to say anything more. Lupin ends up going, "Okay."

Jigen visibly relaxes at that, and whaps Lupin hard on the back as his own shit-eating grin appears. "Okay. See you around, asshole."

The pronunciations were the easiest he'd ever encountered. Though, piecing them together into proper enunciations until they spilled well-formed from his mouth, that had been trickier. Among the books he found was a dictionary-- Japanese _ to French _ , actually, but the reverse lookup didn't impede Lupin by much. He reversed the logic and found _ sense _. Until the characters danced around him and flew in orbit around his candlelight, and the library lit up with fireworks of kanji with the necessity of furigana eventually falling away because he could understand them separately. And then he could read the actual stories, the dogeared novels warm with someone else's fingerprints, and feel the presence of half of himself, new and fresh against the half that he'd been constantly folding away and pushing into corners.

A certain portrait-- but this is the one with the once-weird engravings on the plaque, that weren't so weird after Lupin learned to read them-- had the following inscription:

_ "All I need is this." _

It was like finding more of who he was, and he filled in all the gaps of his soul with that same phrase over and over. He philosophized over what 'this' could be, while reading through the children's Japanese books and imagining what it would have been like to have them read to him instead. He imagined a hand over his, a voice over his. And he came to the conclusion, as his vision clouded over with wilted petals, that he'd missed out entirely on 'this'.

He wasn't sure at all what he could have needed. What it meant. What to look for. What to expect.

Lupin finds Goemon. Or rather, Goemon allows himself to be found. One minute, Lupin had been tracking the swordsman through a thicket just beyond the outskirts of Phnom Penh after finally getting a lock on his whereabouts. The next minute, there's a cold gleam rearing just under his chin, and Goemon's voice quiet and close to his ear.

"Are you so eager for death, Lupin the Third?"

Lupin barely had the chance to register the change of breeze. And just like the first time, everything begins peeling away from around the sword as it sluices him head to toe with resonance, as Goemon's words form hot drags against his skin and fills Lupin with a heat more prominent than the sultry South East humidity.

"Nope, just a thief," Lupin breathes, light-headed with the rush of intensity of the unfiltered world, "stealing a moment with you."

"You dare tempt my hand? After your life was so narrowly spared?" Goemon steps into his line of sight, his entire body moving smoothly in rotation around the blade that doesn't budge. "Zantetsu can tear through the chambers of Jigoku, if I so require. It has cut down men larger than both our masses combined. It will surely slide through your spindly frame with lewd ease."

It shouldn't sound so much like seduction, should it? Maybe his mind is just that twisted, because Lupin wants to say _ yes _ to all. To feel that power, even if it were to claim his life-- the power to smooth away all signs of imprints crawling in his veins-- to die absolutely consumed in the ringing. He wants to ask if that's what Goemon wants. He wants to ask Goemon if it felt like their heartbeats synchronized the day they met, if he had tasted Lupin through the breaths they traded.

Instead, he makes an offer. "You want the Dioscuri."

Goemon's scowl deepens, but he says nothing, in silence allowing Lupin a chance to speak further.

"They're using my surname for credibility, and me as a scapegoat," he explains. "But not with my permission. I've got no part in their game, pinky swear--"

He tries to lift his hand, only to find the sword's edge pushed right up against his adam's apple to halt the action, effective as bondage. But Goemon is still silent. Still listening.

Lupin continues. "Look, if more assassins like you come along, that spells out more trouble for me. Ergo, I oughta deal with all this sooner rather than later. And if the organization's as big as I remember it, it'll take more than just a single handsome fool to bring it all down."

"You are proposing an alliance." The sword lessens pressure against his skin. Goemon looks shocked.

Lupin wonders if Goemon already knows the reason for why the Dioscuri feel privy to the Lupin name at all-- or how the title 'Dioscuri' belongs to the astrological Gemini twins, the symbol for which is a roman numeral two.

"How do you like the sound of being a couple of handsome fools instead?" he pushes earnestly, and his stomach twists into knots. "I like what I've seen so far, and I want what I like. So what do you say? I promise I'll make it fun."

For a while, Goemon only stares, like he's trying to decipher Lupin's true intent through their locked gazes.

"You truly wish to end the Dioscuri?" Goemon questions warily, a sort of look of pity in his eyes. It seems he does know, that it's all about the Second.

The ringing dims. It takes Lupin a moment before he can find a response. "It's kind of a loose an end for me."

"Your head is still all fucked up, isn't it?" French.

"Are you here?" Lupin asked in Japanese.

His father said, "_ Non _."

They shot at the same time.

What happened next seemed to run in the family. And there could only be one active _ Lupin _.

Goemon's bone to pick with the Dioscuri is founded in their possession of a stolen sculpture. It had been taken from his former master's school, years and years ago. And upon the departed master's recent death, it's Goemon's intention to right a wrong in the name of his sensei's memory.

It's every bit the sort of heroic fairytale that Lupin didn't think still existed in this day and age. But then, there's Goemon donning hakama comfortably to every scene. Wielding a glorified knife to gun fights. Speaking, more formally than the situation requires, of shame and honor, of transcendence, of death before failure, of how "water may reflect the face, but fire reflects the soul". He trains daily, and each time he cuts air, Lupin sees the sky not only for its blue, but for its _ grey _. Lupin can smell the monsoon rains on bamboo leaf, the fresh mud as the slushed dirt curls around his toes. He feels the water slide over his skin, build on his individual eyelashes, watches as it collects in his hand-- clear.

The only reason Lupin even realizes Goemon has ceased training is the appearance of the sheep flock nearby, in the distance since they're still wary of the stranger. He doesn't know how long Goemon has been standing there, watching him, and he drops the cupped water in his hands as his self-awareness hedges back. But there's no judgment or assumption in the samurai's eyes. Just a quiet gaze, observing.

"Upon our first encounter, you had asked me if the sky was always blue."

Lupin blinks and feels guilty as he admits, "I don't remember that."

"I would answer you now."

"Yeah? Lay it on me."

Goemon clears his throat. Then, "When we see it blue."

It clicks so neatly into place in the jumbled mess of Lupin's mind, that the circuit comes alive and gilds everything around them in a sunlit glow. It's the first time that anyone has used terms _ he _ could understand. Rearranging and decoding unnecessary. A portrait's inscription passes bright behind his eyelids, and he can't figure out why.

He ends up laughing.

_

and so: Jigen and Fujiko don't seem to be all too surprised to see Goemon show up for the next job. They exchange peculiar, conversant kind of smiles, that both try to be rid of when Lupin glances over to catch them. He bites his tongue on it, if only to absolve his own guilt of ultimately deciding to leave them out of the Dioscuri work; it's not like it pays, after all. Goemon has the tact to not press for explanation.

Pépère used to tell him, "Do not blame your father. Blame me."

He was always draped in the molten notes of searing ash, the scent trailing in his wake like the hindmost part of dusk just as last light fell past the Alps. Not that he had any need for sun. A spotlight followed wherever he went, bass cellos harmonizing in cadence to his movements-- and his footfall cast off a reverberation deep in the ground, rooting into the earth's crust as everlasting applause. He was, after all, the First.

But Lupin mostly knew him for the weighted, wrinkled hand of nimble fingers and knotted knuckles that would ruffle bright birdsong into his hair. Lupin used to need both his whole fists to capture just two of those fingers.

Pépère, may his soul rest, had no idea what was going on for the longest time. He encouraged Lupin to talk to the Second, to empathize with him. He recognized in himself the failed fatherhood that would find its way to his grandson, and longed to reverse the damage, not knowing the extent of the sickness.

The old estate had been so huge, and he'd been so weary-- twilight age further hampered by all the microtears and injuries piled up from a youth of impossible feats-- that he very rarely moved beyond his wing. (Though, that may have also been an act of respect towards the Second, who detested his presence.) Lupin hadn't liked to bother him too often, especially not after a night of imprinting, lest he catch on. Lupin knew how the relationship between his father and grandfather-- or, what little remained of one-- had nonetheless meant the world to the First. Lupin would have never willingly jeopardized Pépère's happiness.

The Second would further threaten him with that affection, warning and mocking him all at once.

_ "Will you trouble your grandfather, with his old heart?" _

Back then, the ringing was often loudest with Pépère. Especially when he laughed, and Lupin swore the old gentleman beheld a star cluster behind his ribcage. Lupin didn't know how to blame that. Didn't want to. Never learned to. And he refused to trouble him with anything.

He buttoned his collars high, rolled down his sleeves low, and played around enough with make-up to know how to apply it outside of play.

Maybe that was why Pépère ended up doing what he did.

The mansion is trying to open through the text on his laptop screen, seeping through the lines that connect and form every _ je _ , _ avoir _ , _ de _ , and _ ȇtre _. Lupin wills more colors over the breaking seams. Focuses on the ringing that surrounds him, hums in him. Focuses on keeping the words merely words.

Goemon isn't the first time that Dioscuri trouble has spilled onto his plate. But most the opponents until now have been no problem, so he hasn't really felt any need to take the fight beyond the short altercations with the few grotty mercenaries making bids for his head as repentance for Dioscuri wrongdoings. Lupin had figured the organization would collapse inevitably soon if the enemies it makes are so third-rate. He's still not wrong.

They're so embarrassingly sloppy at this point that it's a manageable task to intercept their data transfers between his own heists. All the cyphertext decrypts into French, which makes it that much easier for Lupin to skim the words and pluck out anything of relevance to business destinations, coordinates, and scheduled transfers between parties.

Back in the Dioscuri's heyday, the twins logo represented two halves becoming whole as they beheld the art piece connecting them. It was a highly exclusive and grossly overpriced underground network of art exchange, featuring pieces the Second had stolen and locked away, only to be revealed again at the right price. What remains today of that crime ring is more testament to his father's legacy than Lupin personally or professionally ever will be, which is total and utter bullcrap considering how he's being dragged into this residual mess of a failing conglomerate anyway.

A sheep is trying to rest its head on his lap, and Lupin has to wave it away to continue working.

Whoever runs the Dioscuri seem to enjoy playing to theme; there's two of them, regarded as The Twins. Correspondence within the business seem to indicate that although they aren't blood related, they refer to one another as brother and sister, and to the Second as their **Father**. It takes Lupin a while to move his eyes from the word. Funny, he thinks, that the Second nutured such filial piety in these secret bastards, and in his son, he only cultivated....

_ "Your head is still all fucked up, isn't it?" _

It's the crime ring's loss, Lupin decides as he reads on. The DIoscuri have gotten themselves named in too many a scandal that involves selling duplicate pieces at original price. But even still, no one is buying art anymore, afraid of losing billions of invested dollars to a certain master thief running amock. Now, that's just poetic justice. The timeline of the organization's losses of profit are in direct correlation to Lupin's rise in career.

So at least he kinda gets it now, their motivation for claiming affiliation with the last of the Lupin line to play their enemies against him. It's a bandaid fix, though. Everyone in the underground market has caught onto the fact that the Dioscuri is not above selling counterfeits. There's no recovery to that kind of reputation. They just want to drag him down with them. Possibly, it could also be related to....

_ "Pa, are you here?" _

_ " _ Yes _ ." _

It's only when his hands start fizzling out of focus does he realize he might have overdone it.

The text on his screen begins warping, peeling off the screen like dead leaves. Another blink and the laptop and table become grainy and sour, and there are fuzzy pixel lines running up his arms and legs. A black fracture cracks across the far wall, putrid at each edge. Another breaks the floor in two. Lupin reaches out for the sheep that were just there, only to find the fractures wrapping around his wrists, up his ankles, binding him to the chair. More black fractures cleft down from the ceiling, through the air, tether to his neck and constrict. The tell-tale echoed creak unspools from down the hallway. Somewhere close, his father begins laughing. Somewhere closer, he hears the hammer of a gun click back. Somewhere along the way, Lupin becomes so small and numb and hurting all over, unable to move.

And then he sees...himself. Himself being seen. The ringing is so drowned out, so diluted, so void that the smears are spilling over and unto and into and through.

_ "Will you trouble your grandfather?" _

Lupin wants to scream, _ lookawaylookawaylookaway _. The Second turns away from him, and the scaly, oozing walls begin to fizz into Lupin's mouth, nose, ears, eye sockets. He can't stop it. He can't breathe-- he needs p ie ce s--

_ "With his old heart?" _

He needs to find his _ lines _\--

"You rise early. I am surprised."

The imprints pause. Everything stops. On the floor, Lupin glimpses a trail of footprints making their way to him, soft and even against the rest of the smearing, squirming whole.

"You also do not go to sleep until well into the evening time." With each step, the ringing begins to breach through, carried on the glint of a sword sheath that hovers near the footfall. "I arrived last night, but felt it imprudent to disturb your work."

It's nearly phased over by grey, lumpy coarseless like cement pumping over him, and Lupin bites his tongue around a groan.

"…A headache?" One light touch to his face, and Goemon is in front of him now, a blurry mash of oscillating clarity.

Lupin finally exhales as the ringing hazes vaguely near, barely touching. "Like you wouldn't believe."

"I can prepare tea. Unless you have another way that I can be of assistance."

_ Leave _, and the three voices that hiss this can be identified as his father, an echo of the manifestations around him, and his own. When it's gotten this far, usually the only thing to do is let the mansion gobble him up, to freefall into the mass until the ringing shakes the parts of him loose enough to connect together again.

But, the ringing is here right now. So....

"Can you…cut? Like, just the center of the room will probably work."

Goemon looks surprised for all of a moment, before he nods and positions himself accordingly. With a yawp, he makes a dovetail of three-cut successions before swiftly sliding zantetsu back to its sheath. Upon clasping it shut, the black fissures closest to them shriek and shrivel back.

Lupin is still bound, but at least he can breathe better. He nudges his chin above him where the fissures have dripped down to wring his neck. "Here, too?"

Goemon still looks puzzled, but comes to Lupin and nudges the hilt of his sword towards fissures he can't see.

Lupin tries not to be so obvious as he leans towards him and all the ringing he yields. "Yeah."

Two more slashes and mobility floods back into his sore limbs. More shrieks-- if he listens close, they sound like pitched-up strings of curses his father used to say. Goemon watches as Lupin rub feeling back into his arms and stretches his legs out. The smears are leaving, pushed back into form.

"One more," Lupin says, stronger now. "Over here."

Another slash, and sun bursts into Lupin's vision from the cleared window. The last of the fractures crumble into dust. Light rays cast upon Goemon causes him to glow. Lupin feels himself glowing, too. But there's a noise just beyond the front door that Goemon's cuts haven't yet reached. Goemon wordlessly follows when Lupin gets up and walks across the hotel room.

When he opens the door, it's all nearly black.

Lupin's foot slips backward before he can think, but Goemon is already moving forward for him, needing no further instruction.

He cuts.

But there's a startling lack of confetti. Of color. Of noise. Of sensation. Just an empty hotel hallway, plainly lined with doors. Just the room that Goemon and Lupin stand in. Just Lupin, and Goemon there beside him.

All that remains is the residual ring emanating from Goemon, muffled as he sheaths zantetsu.

Then, pinks and yellows begin bloom around them, like opening a new book for the first time. A flock of birds take flight just overhead. All of it is soft, distant, for once waiting on Lupin to close the gap, should he choose.

Winged breath rustles from his lungs, taking flight to join the birds above. "Wow. You're _ incredible _."

The pinks gather in Goemon's face as he shifts awkwardly under the unexpected praise. "I...am proficient. That is all."

"Don't let him sweet-talk you." In splash of cool salt breeze, Fujiko steps between them. The only reason Lupin knows it's really her is how Goemon's eyes follow her movements. The latter misses the trail of bubbles popping in her wake, though, and Lupin a strawberry slice forms on Lupin's tongue as she bumps playfully into him. "Where's my compliment, huh?"

Her visage spins out to scrutiny as she really takes him in, holding her nose.

"My god, you've looked better. You've _ smelled _ better. How long have you been wearing that? Have you showered at all?"

"I'm forever showered in love for you," he jibes, closing his eyes as her words fall over him like lego pieces. He shoots a languid grin her way. "Does that count?"

"_ Lupin _." The lego pieces surge.

"What the hell's going on? Why'd you change motel rooms?" Jigen's accusation cuts in from behind her, dark maroon bruises sporing from his person and pushing the lego pieces aside. A violin has the comedic nerve to announce him in high-pitched staccato. He dumps a duffle of supplies onto the floor and it sends out a shockwave that raises Lupin's hairs. "It's been a week. You said you could handle a week."

The violin staccato jabs towards his face and he has to hold up his hands to bat it away. "And it's been _ handled _ \-- you're back, I am totally _ lucid _, the gang's all here-- I just got caught up with the plan, that's all, so. Can you-- can you calm down?" The bruises fan towards him noxiously, turning from maroon to a blacker blue.

Jigen reaches out instead, and although the shadows on his hands contort into claws, upon contact they turn into clouds. He takes Lupin by the face, and there's a small grunt, indicating he doesn't like at all whatever he sees there.

"What color am I?"

"_ Jigen _ !" Lupin yelps. Goemon _ and _ Fujiko don't need to know about _ this _ , at _ all _.

"Answer me."

"I don't know! A bunch!"

"What kind?"

"Jagged, rotten! It doesn't even work like that! Also, I hate you!"

The next thing Lupin knows, he's being hauled onto his feet and practically dragged out of the kitchen-- past the bewildered prodding stares of Goemon and Fujiko-- and towards the back room (closet, more like) with the beat-up mattress in it.

"_ Sleep _, jackass."

Lupin might've been able to muster one last glare. But before he can follow through, Jigen's hat is placed over his face, eclipsing the light with surprising tenderness.

Quieter now, Jigen says again, "Sleep."

"He sees things," Pépère broached, the night before he died.

"He _ thinks _ he sees things," the Second answered scathingly. "He has no friends. He has no mother. His father is a wanted _ criminal _. His existence serves no purpose, except to come of age and make himself an exile of society. Are you catching onto the pattern at all? Face your legacy, Pa. The life you chose shouldn't have been forced down the line. We deserved a choice as well. If…" His father's voice withered, carrying all the strength of a drifting spider's string. "…if he wanted to be an artist--"

"I don't want to make paintings!" Lupin exclaimed, pushing the cracked door all the way open and spilling all planets into the space, falling into orbit of the sun. "I want to _ steal _ them."

The two men fell silent upon his entry.

Pépère's fire-lined embers had flared and smoked with life, but he cast a grimace towards the Second. "Son--"

"You finally have your desired heir," the Second muttered, acrid fumes setting mold upon his surroundings.

Lupin held his nose as his father stormed past.

"I choose this," Lupin the Third insisted, imprints shifting against his skin. His stomach twisted but he locked his knees, not hiding behind the slices anymore. "I'm gonna be a master thief."

"Arsène." The Second didn't even deign to look at him directly, his mouth spored with hateful decay. "You can never be that if you cannot even trust your own eyes to appraise worth(*)."

The streamers _ burn _.

Cake frosting garish and smeared across his face and eyes, and tying fast to his arms and legs. Twin faces swerve and entwine and dive down his throat, blurring his system up, crossing wires, turning slivers of his insides. The lines are smudging, patterns are washing them away. Lupin gathers his pieces close as he can get them, cocktails shaken up with ice while the things that are everything else are stirred. He fortifies, layers it. Keeps the lines drawn. Balloons are popping all around him. Pins are flying, trying to pin a tail onto him. He folds again, and again, smaller and smaller. Lupin stumbles, tumbles from the blare in his ears, d o w n.

Pigments, when mixed, turn dark. Murky, convoluted, pulling him apart from the inside. He wipes at them, ends up with more _ smears _ , more **mush**, his hands melt out from under him, and he's abandoned in the shadowed void pouring over him.

It's the maw of the old estate. His father's face looms above him, another face looms beyond _ him _.

Lupin's mouth and eyes are pouring out more of the inky black that binds around his throat and limbs. He can't move. He can only stare at the face in front of him, and at the face of the encroaching figure. Face to face, a vase, the twins, but _ they are nothing alike _. They are nothing alike. They were never anything alike. His father to his grandfather; his father to him. A sheep bleats in the distance, and only then does Lupin recall having shot the Second in the face already. He was dead.

Is dead.

_ Is _.

"You killed him," the Second speaks then, gaudy gift bows shining from sockets where his eyes were supposed to be. "My father is dead because of _ you _!"

His arms are laden with a hefty champagne bottle, bubbling up from the inside from all the pressure. He aims the neck at Lupin.

"Th-that was you!" Lupin gargles, green, black, yellow, and it forces its way back into him. He feels chopped, a jumble, the lines and imprints mutilating him from the inside. "I couldn't…Pépère was just…!"

_ Troubled. _

Something primal snaps in Lupin's brainstem and then he's shooting. It's point blank. His walther is aimed true. But the Second remains unperturbed and unharmed. He keeps shooting, anger ebbing into clogged despair.

The Second, covered head to toe in tails pinned on him, and scrutinizes him and snickers. "Your head is still all fucked up, isn't it?"

Iced and oiled and choking, Lupin sees the old estate opening up behind him, a void mass, all-consuming and ever-hungry. Imprints rise from Lupin's deep, press up against his skin, tearing outward, too deep, too _ muc _ ** _s_ ** _ h _ . He can't breathe. He's going in, and under. _ No. Please. _ The figure behind the Second draws closer. _ NO, no, don't looknonononono-- _ The Second's fingers are prying at the champagne cork, prying around the thin neck, Lupin can feel the fingers upon his throat. He can't breathe.

Suddenly, the pigments turn into _ light _.

No longer smears, but still mixed, pinpointed into a single focus and creating a white blinding BRIGHT. The mush peels back, split into lines-- splitting the Second-- and where the pieces fall past, Lupin sees his father's body falling to, in two, pieces, too, one and then a second-- Lupin can spy the fatty tissue and all the layers of the dermis before it flattens into paper, into more light rays, glowing through him now. He glows with it, from it, consumed and released in it. And finally/// he inhales.

Like fresh chill in the silent moments of barely dawn. Like having a funny thought, right before everyone around erupts into laughter.

Goemon is standing where the approaching figure had been. He strikes again, wide with a yawp that burns lightning into the smears like tiger stripes-- and zantetsu forms a deep crosshatch in the vacuum core. The ribbons of the dying smears that fall around them are huge, like the streamers from before, only the streamers around them are fire now. The building around them is burning. Lupin takes more of the ringing into him, coughing on the heavy smoke, nearly collapsing from it all-- only able to stare as the sword shreds the nightmare asunder.

Goemon rushes to his side, patting streamers off him until it's smoke and charred skin that remains burning even once the flames are out.

It's so loud, how the ringing rushes him now, that it takes Lupin a while to realize that Goemon is shouting his name.

Goemon is in his face, eyes wild. His words break through: "_ What has possessed you _?"

"My-- my bullets weren't--" Lupin's voice is jumbled, the words shaken around and dumped out from his mouth. "I shot, but he wasn't going down. No matter how many times…."

"_ Lupin _ … _ I don't understand _."

Goemon doesn't speak French. Remember?

And still, behind Goemon-- on the dark edge of the setting horizon giving way to starlight-- Lupin spies the collapsed torso atop its separated legs. No champagne bottle-- just a single-barrel shotgun, winchester. The head is in enough light that Lupin sees…flowing, blood-matted blonde hair. A woman?

Sheep are nuzzling Lupin's legs, one bumps its nose to Lupin's knuckles.

Goemon is saying his name again, trying to get his attention. The samurai's other hand is upon his, where Lupin's gun feels oddly light.

It's because it's empty.

Well. No wonder.

Somewhere far deep in the mush, where he never sunk again, so deep, so crusted over and encased with imprints, and line after line, layered with patterns endless and familiar, _ too _ deep, there is a forbidden, labyrinthine oblivion he trespassed at some point.

A door picked open, and the light of the hallway whisking into the room like it wanted to show him…but it all dims from there. It was the darkest room he'd ever known. He squinted his eyes to see, was able to decipher starkly lucid contours of the stockpile: crusted tin buckets, curled tubes, some wide planes of not quite paper but more clothlike? ripped apart, broken bits of thin wood, and tiny brushes scattered across the floor. And cutting forever into his brain, singing bright and sweetly crisp, was a portrait. He would never hold it, and would never _ see _ it again, but Lupin would consider it the first thing he stole, and he would carry it with him from that far deep dark mush, for the rest of his life.

Before he took in much else, there was a vice in his hair that coated him in liquid-cold dread through to the bone, yanking him backwards from the threshold, throwing him backwards, down into darkness.

(This was where it not necessarily ended; there was something more that followed. It was as if the footage continued on, but with smearing black stifling out each successive frame. This would be where the smears would ultimately try to drag him back to. But as stated before, he never wanted to sink here again.)

But the portrait. Among the many artworks laying around signed "A.L. II", this is the sole one that stayed with him, even after the roll of blacked-out frames played to the end.

Jigen and Fujiko are refusing to work with him now, for a number of reasons that Lupin refuses to hear out simply because they're _ stupid _ . Jigen says it doesn't make sense to jump into a new, complicated heist before Lupin's burns are fully healed because he's a liability like this; _ Liability, my entire master thief ass! _ ; but Fujiko agrees. Fujiko brings up the point that if he absolutely needs to do a job, he can do it on his own since he's had no problem keeping them out of the Dioscuri work; _ I told you, it's not like I could've paid you for it, so why does it even matter? _; but Jigen sides with her!

And neither of them have particular liking for the segment of Goemon's report where Lupin "had submitted wholly to reverie in mid-battle", and it's out before Lupin can shut the samurai up. By then, it's three against one, and Lupin reacts like a cornered animal.

He knows he's throwing a tantrum, but can't help but namecall and whine because it's not like _ talking _ will work. Until Fujiko blows up right back at him, lightning strikes falling all around him-- and Jigen simply withdraws completely, leaving Lupin void of anything to feed a clever retort on. They leave a rupture from the door slam in their wake, a fissure trailing towards Lupin in offer of a path that leads to...well, he knows where it leads to. Same as he knows the only reason it won't come nearer to him is still in the room, and Lupin heatedly ignores him.

He begrudgingly relies on the ringing to identify the couch and push it around. He drags it in a circle so that it faces the wall, and sits down, letting everything just _ go _.... Smears burst outward, like a lanced infection, biting and singeing in clumps of bitter ache, pushing out in waves of sandpapered green and black stench. He lets the pressure bleed until it becomes clean flow, rolls stilling to ripples, each new drop smooth and unrushed and waterlike. He dips his toes in, legs swung over engawa. The pond at his feet is Aoraki starlight whispering back at him, jellyfish drifting between the constellations. Lupin digs his fingers into the woodgrain and has trouble guessing the origin source of this image-- painting, or movie, or memory?

In any case, the view calms him.

Goemon comes to sit next to him, and he blends right in with the atmosphere, right down to palette scheme. Lupin himself feels more out of place in his business attire.

"They are angry that they could not be present in your time of need," Goemon says. "They are angry with me as well, for having been where they were disallowed."

Lupin would have preferred to stay angry. But there's a breeze of plum blossoms wafts across the star pond, and the constellations bunch into koi that group underneath the engawa where Goemon sits.

"Lupin…these lapses in your clarity--"

"I _ know _ what's real," Lupin can't help but snap. The air around him bends and dents like crumpled paper, edges lined into his skin. "I just get distracted. The smears don't lie, they just tell a different story. All that's there is there-- it's different when I look, but I know everything I need to know!"

He bites back another flood rush of defensiveness, already aware that the conversation will arrive no where if he continues, but even then it stays risen, draping them into the shadow of its built tsunami.

How does Goemon see him now? The paper that comprises Lupin wrinkles all the more, tearing around his linework, and he knows where he'll go if he drops.

"What you see, how you see it...it has worth," is Goemon's response. "But the same cannot be spoken for the dangers it poses. The latter is what I mean to nullify."

Lupin stops crumpling. He leans around the crinkled air to get a clearer look at the samurai, blinking dumbly.

Upon his silence, Goemon continues. "I would like to try guiding you in meditation. You may be more grounded, able to organize your thoughts better. Perhaps even benefit from an improved perception."

The samurai turns to him, and the meeting of their eyes emits a single pulse, the high pitched tone of a dime dropping on linoleum, that wipes the scene around them smooth, and ceases the surge of all the time in the world, for the time being. From the same pulse, a warmth that creeps into Lupin's fingers and toes, vines ups his limbs and blossoms in his ribcage, crowding his lungs so that he can't suck in a decent breath.

Lupin just says, "Oh."

"Forgive me if this is too forward." Goemon turns away, and Lupin has a chance to clear his throat, exhaling flower petals upon his lap.

"No, no. Uh.... It's just, you're gonna have to tell me what to do. I've never...."

"You'll do as I say?"

The slightest curve relaxes Goemon's lips, but there's an edge to his gaze that makes the warmth within Lupin knot and tighten.

"...Tell me how you want me."

And for a razor-sharp, dialated moment that raises the hairs on Lupin's skin, it's only them. And the exchange of words that have blotted the air between them. Goemon is skin and heat and sensation and the weight of the entire universe curving to his gravity. If Lupin could reach out--

Goemon tells him, "Close your eyes."

Tonight, the imprints squirm under Lupin's dermis, threatening to tear out and split Lupin into bisects-- into _ slivers _\-- in the process. "I.... I'm not sure...."

"I will remain here, Lupin." Goemon's demeanor changes then, becomes soft, accomodating. He eases closer, slowly, the poetry of his gaze like an oath to hold Lupin together.

Like a door creaking open when it hadn't been fully shut.

So Lupin shuts the light from his eyes. And it's so, _ so _ rotten. The whistling nips at the frays of him, the layers that comprise him, rattles them hard enough to scramble up the order. He tastes coins, feels their edges digging into the cracks of him, feels the dark pull him under. The imprints come, tracing the fault lines of all his pieces. There's a gun held before him.

From somewhere far off, there are words. Goemon's words. Japanese.

"You must breathe."

But the mush is rising, crushing up against his lungs, like a vice, there's no more room. There's no more room. There's old, oaken jaws unhinged and opening wide into empty.

"Lupin. We are _ here _."

A sheep nudges his shoulder. Lupin snaps back to the light, gasping. Goemon's hand is upon his shoulder. For a fleeting second, Lupin sees the motel in clarity. Then a shooting star smudges dusk onto the kitchen. Lupin meets Goemon's gaze unsurely.

"You are having difficulty." Goemon releases him, just as a jellyfish bobs citrus pink between them.

"It's…smearing too much, I guess," Lupin mumbles. He stops and has to double-check that he's speaking the right language. "Some days it's-- it runs too _ deep _. I don't think I can--"

"Not today," Goemon affirms.

Lupin nods, drawing a shaky breath. "Not today."

"Then, shall we sit quietly together? I rather enjoy passing time with you."

"Yeah, all the mush--" Lupin stops himself.

Goemon is ever patient. "Zantetsu is able to cut it?"

"Not forever, but yeah. Your sword just…wipes everything."

"And are there distractions here to be dealt with?" Goemon's hand goes to the hilt of zantetsu.

"No. I mean, a few. There's always bound to be a few." Lupin realizes then that this is the first time he's ever spoken so openly about this, and smiles a bit bashfully. "But, these are the nice kind."

Goemon just says, "Oh."

There was an attic that chimed gold.

After Pépère passed away, so suddenly from natural cause, Lupin spent every fleeting moment afterward walking the freshly void halls of his wing at the far end of the estate. The space had become so dark. Murk stabbed out at him, menacing and grimed in his throat. Sandpaper on his eyes wherever he looked. The ringing was so warbled and far beyond reach-- but this was the only place he could even catch any semblance of it anymore.

He laid on the huge bed, remembered the nights he would sleepover when he'd still been small. He looked out all the windows, trying to see the things Pépère might have in the way he might have, trying to come up with the same sort of musings that could have developed in his grandfather's mind. Trying to fit himself into the grooves left behind, breathe the last dust of Pépère's voice remaining in the air. Determined to relive all the times they'd walked together down the corridors when, very briefly, the First had been able to share his spotlight with the Third.

And one day while wandering, raw and so laden with sticky mire that the floor swallowed up his feet with each step, he saw it.

There was an attic.

Dawn broke through the cracks that formed the square of an entryway. And, it reminded him so much of his grandfather's molten glow.

He stacked two chair atop one another, and still Lupin had barely grazed the handle with his fingertips. With all the sheep below him bleating in cheer, he leapt for it.

Jellyfish spilled out as the latch door fell open to his hinged weight, the give like ice cubes crunching between his teeth. A sunflower ladder bloomed out, extending all the way to the floor. Above, the attic's entrance beckoned with a chorus of falling flower petals, harmonizing with the tooth-ached chiming that grew louder still. Lupin climbed.

What he found in that attic was a trove of echoes his grandfather left in the form of journals and papers, a compilation of his grandfather's prime days as a master thief, applause living on in the velevetine angles of Pépère's handwriting. Pearlescent and honeyed, like moonlight dripping through the spaces between his fingers. Like how sunlight looked when his eyes were closed. Like the birdsong ruffles that the First had left upon his hair, that begun to sing again.

It all chimed gold.

_ That _ was the true empire, Lupin thought.

"That," said the Second, as he burned the entire wing down, "is all shit."

He had Lupin stand beside him and watch.

Lupin stared into the blaze, unblinking and unreacting. He refused to let his father glean any morsel of satisfaction from what little emotion remained in him. He retreated behind his slices, layered it like tempered glass, smoothing out space still within for the pieces he would keep forever. Every diagram. Every scribbled-out note. Every small joke and metacomment tucked between the lines of large-scale ambitions for larceny.

But the Second's work was done.

They are still all on fire. Lupin can't change that part, no matter how he tries.

He still rifles through the pyre every now and again, trying to read past the flickering burning. He's in habit of bringing out his grandfather's collection when seeking inspiration for a new job. In this case, Jigen and Fujiko are finally agreeing to work with him again; and though Goemon says nothing on the subject, Lupin suspects he had something to do with convincing them; so he wants to welcome them back with something _ good _.

It's for naught. As per usual, anything on the burning pages is indecipherable, giving way to the searing blooms. Lupin has tried blowing on them, has tried dousing them in water, has tried snuffing the flames in airtight containers, all to no avail. The Second's work is done, the First's work is undone, and so the Third simply focuses on doing on his own. He keeps the records amassed as he works, the mere scaling of his grandfather's plans enough to set alight his own ingenuity. They float around him as glorified light sources as he conceptualizes a diagram of wildly riffing piano solos.

Thumbsprints for notes as he arranges the multiple harmonies atop each other, clinging to the feeling-- like a roar, an applause-- growing bolder inside the breaths he's yet to take. It gets patchy, messy, as he works and reworks. Wipes away, builds over again. But even the discord feels like it belongs. He's got this now. He's got everything. He _ creates _.

Page after page is filled with diagrams, notes, a running play-by-play like a script he composes the roles for. He squeezes notes into the corners, doodles to make it fun, decides maybe this part is more suitable to the part from the beginning, so he draws an arrow across the span of looseleaf he's laid out-- one, two, three-- but make a tiny revision here, smudging it a bit, but only a bit, he could push a bit more-- four, five, six, seven...wait, where's the eighth page?

"Have you considered taking discipline in the fine arts?" Goemon speaks from somewhere behind him.

Lupin glances over, and _ Oh, there it is _, in the other's hand. It's a sketch of the very statue he intends to take.

Goemon's made a habit of staying close whenever Lupin works late, for zantetsu-accessibility reasons ("I've observed that your mind is most plagued when you lack sleep," was Goemon's take, which, after Lupin thought about it, was pretty much on the nose), and it's definitely helped out as far as productivity and efficiency goes. The catch is, if Goemon goes to bed, Lupin goes to bed. And aside from a few admittedly childish fits on Lupin's part (he dislikes interrupting the creative process!), it's kept everything from smearing.

Lupin finds himself chuckling at Goemon's initial comment, twiddling a pinky and ring finger at the high octave of the arrangements as he winds the arrow around them and pins it to the page in the other's hand. "I want to _ steal _ art, not make it. I'm not my dad."

That piques Goemon's surprise. "The Second?"

"Yeah, I've got an inkling that most the counterfeits that the Dioscuri sell these days are from the stockpile of dupes he did. He was pretty good at replicating stuff. Worked with a lot of hyperrealism and landscapes." Although, the one portrait done of a person....

Goemon's hand covers his, and it's only in juxtapose with the arrival of his steadiness that Lupin realizes he'd been shaking.

"You need rest," Goemon tells him, like a scarf draped over his shoulders.

The notes bouying around him drop to the floor, clonking in the lower most octave. Before Lupin can feel indignant, something else has wholly enraptured the latter's attention. He's got so many pieces scattered about them, his grandfather's old notes included.

And there-- where Goemon's arm has touched a few of the fiery pages, the burning has stopped. He's being pulled and ushered down the hall now. Lupin grabs the sheet to take with him, skims over a plan his grandfather left of how he'd stolen a statue in the dead of winter. A quest entitled in cursive: _ Snow would be nice? _

The thing about Goemon is that he doesn't even need his sword to cut through.

If Lupin peeled back the layers, what would he find?

There's a center of gravity, and everything Lupin has taken in life is compiled around the field, covering it up with more layers upon layers. But it's akin to a black hole, always empty, always eating and always hungry, always needing more, always demands beyond the lines Lupin keeps it confined to.

Some part of him already knows. Some protected part that missed his grandfather terribly, that saw with two eyes something real before his father attempted to thrash it out, that had to be locked away quick, that knew **she** was not meant to be shared, that was so scared of losing the few things he had, that he formed slivers of himself to hide away because small enough pieces couldn't all be taken, because assembly required is better than disappeared forever, and if he can make something new each time, something greater than the sum of its parts, then all the better.

Yet again. If put together the way as intended, what would he find?

The part that knows is nestled deep and shelled, connected back to Lupin's waken sight in convoluted dead-ends, secret passageways, changing passcodes, and false paths that looped back to the beginning.

But if he wanted to, perhaps the ringing could take him. He used to wonder, Will it ever be loud enough?

Or will it lead eventually into a dead-end too?

Lupin knows it's a dream. Has to be. Not because the world is a canvas of fabric around him, but because Goemon is fabric too. In real life, Goemon never smears. But in this confine of Lupin's mind, everything and Goemon is uniform, the same array of bird designs. Everything, save for Lupin, is cloth.

He approaches Goemon, but the samurai doesn't acknowledge him. He remains looking straight ahead, completely through Lupin. Lupin tries speaking with him, then shouting at him, getting in his face, pokes him a bit...and finally, he bodily tackles him.

He ends up falling into a swirl of red and white fabric, material so smooth and fleeting that Lupin cannot grab hold. It slides through his fingers, intangible. He spins like this, blind, like he were caught on a sheet billowing in the wind, until he detaches. He stumbles a great deal before he's able to correct his footing. All these dramatics, and still when Lupin turns to look, Goemon has remained in the same place, in the same state as before.

And Goemon stares on, unresponsive.

So Lupin wills himself to become cloth too. It's his dream, after all. But even when his skin stitches itself and becomes plaid cotton, it's entirely different than what he'd been aiming for. Again, he tries.

He achieves the bird print. Only now, Goemon and the world are all adorned in plaid. He tries again. And again. And every time Lupin identifies Goemon's fabric and is able to alter his fibers to match, Goemon changes. No matter how quick Lupin begins to guess, cycling through the same designs and printing, Goemon remains of different cloth. To polka-dot, to pinstripes, to paisley.

At the point where he's exhausted from the effort, Lupin finally gives, turning away.

And...he doesn't see, rather just _ feels _, Goemon shift fabric behind him, to know that he's become flesh.

But when Lupin turns to finally face him as he truly his, he's blinking awake, swaddled in blankets.

Goemon is standing up from where he'd been sitting beside him. And the world isn't canvas, but ice. There's fog, too, and...it doesn't quite belong. Probably. Lupin's about to call for Goemon, but stops at the savory texture of Jigen's approach. He recalls then that they're staking out a depot in southern Sweden, in shifts. Fujiko is infiltrating the building as a cute, prospective negotiator, and they're keeping tabs on her nearby.

Lupin knows it's real, because Goemon is immaculate as he disappears into the fog. Unsoiled, unmarred, untouchable.

But...nothing could be that perfect, could it?

"Jigen."

The response is a disgruntled grunt, only offering as much ear as necessary. The cold doesn't do anything constructive for Jigen's mood. He plunks down next to Lupin, in the space Goemon once occupied.

"You see him, right?" Lupin asks, under his breath and hunkering deeper into his blanket.

Jigen's hands flicker mid-action of stoking the fire-- that's the only sign that he'd been caught off guard by the question, since Jigen's normally good with his hands. Good with his _ eyes _, is really the important part. Being aware of their surroundings, even from a distance, since Lupin can only really be trusted with the theory of what lay ahead. Lupin knows he needs him. Just as Jigen knows he's needed. Jigen's stare is a slit of visible eye underneath the brim of his hat. It won't miss a detail as it gives Lupin a once-over, a rose dragging along Lupin's skin, all thorns and velvet petals.

"Yeah. I see him." Jigen pinches Lupin's nose between two knuckles, hard enough to make Lupin yelp before he can realize it's to check for frostbite. Jigen's gaze softens. "Moron."

How long had he wandered with his outline a mess of scribbles? A scrap pile carried on legs through the maze of catching colors and shapes in motion, patterns finding him in the footfall he leaves behind, in the doorway he left gaping open and waiting for him. The darkest dark room he'd ever seen. A staircase digging imprints into his back, that pattern of thud- thud- thud- he'd tumbled down. His inability to breathe through the smears that found him at the bottom. The ringing that met with him briefly that left for so long before....

"What's it sound like?"

Fujiko's voice wafts over him, cinnamon and tingly, and it whisks away the building Lupin had constructed in the air between them. Luckily, he'd sketched enough of it onto a napkin. He'd been working at a basic layout to serve as a guide to the others for their next job.

A disruption, but Fujiko's distractions have always been sunrise hued and welcome. She continues, "The ringing you've been following your whole life. Everything else seems to have some kind of allegorical value to it, right? I wonder what the ringing means."

Lupin has to pretend he doesn't notice how only half of Fujiko looks him in the eye. The other half is a swarm of warping shapes, twisting and tricking, and the lips of that half smirks, reciting the way she'll turn against him tonight. The ringing that sparks from this is like holding in a smile while being tickled.

"It's…being filled up with diamonds. Mindlessly mindful. A beacon of snapshots that overlay each other to form a clearer idea." Lupin cuts himself short before it becomes a full ramble. "Uh. It's…loud."

The coral-painted lips of Fujiko's stable half then lilt in a new moon curve. "You know, forget I asked."

"Sometimes, silence is deafening," Jigen suggests. There's a hum colors and geometrics in his arms that he's disassembling to reassemble again, testing himself. "Maybe you're just too used to noise, and the ringing's the exact opposite."

"Come on," Lupin scoffs at the irony, rebuilding his diagram. "You really think I'm a peace-and-quiet type?"

Jigen sniggers under his breath. With a resolute, metal clack, the series of shapes sharpen into a rifle. "Not one friggin' bit."

"Hey, Goemon," Fujiko regards. "Care to weigh in on this?"

Goemon sits perched upon the far window sill, meditating. He doesn't so much as twitch when he says, "I know what the ringing is." And with how he smirks ever so slightly, Lupin could've sworn it was rosemary diffused into the air with the statement following, "But it is not for me to say."

Fujiko and Jigen are an amassment of ruffled feathers for the way their expressions twist to disdain at the bolstered enigma.

Lupin, for what feels like a drop in a bucket full already passes moments like this, brims over with laughter.

As a child, he thought he could get behind the sentiment of worry his grandfather expressed in not-words towards him, growing up in a mansion devoid of belongings because all riches had been squandered in spontaneity instead of put aside for longevity.

At that age, he'd already noticed that the world wasn't delivered with the same elasticity to everyone else as it was to him; anyone else perceived the old estate as a big, _ empty _ house. They couldn't know the taste of dusklight as it spilled past the sills to tag him, or the annoying way the wildflowers shrieked as they bloomed in the springtime, or how so much space he had to flood to the brim with everything he could pull from the library: storybook beasts to gnaw on impossibly excessive mathematical equations, regurgitating into the gap between science and philosophy. Not even Pépère had understood...although slowly, over time, the tang pity in his eyes for it became something rosier.

His father deigned never to store any of his own windfall within the old grounds. All of it went into underground troves, to his own private estates, to the far corners of his hidden empire. The Lupin mansion remained empty for him.

Lupin can't bring himself to blame his grandfather. But he also can't bring himself to go against the First's wishes to blame his father.

Arsène Lupin II, all his mistakes and bitter rot smudging the mansion walls where he'd liquified all that the First had gained; all his walled rage that blocked him of all accountability for his contributions to all that emptiness; all the people he'd cowed into his following and indoctrined into protecting him; the two adolescents he'd taken in secretly shortly after his son had been born, to uphold his legacy over that son. Untouchable.

It's while hacking the electric lock of an underwater safe when Lupin realizes with a start that he recognizes his hands from elsewhere. 

Of all things he'd taken in this life, and of his grandfather whom he'd lost, the nimble fingers and dextrous double-joints and a tactile sensitivity found at the end of his arms, nerves lit up with probability-- they ring for him.

A single, smoking flake of ash settles upon Lupin's nose, and he sneezes bubbles, scuba mask fogging up dark purple.

He places his palm upon his own head, fingers treading through his hair, and is nearly bowled over when a note of birdsong plays.

Off all things his grandfather could have left him, Lupin wishes he could have inherited his kindness. And his ignorance.

"Lupin, what's taking? You got it or what?"

Lupin taps into the audio feed (-. . .- .-. .-.. -.--) a

patt e rn, with his fingers. With _ His _ fingers.

His hands go numb.

There's a scrape of noise in his earpiece, and the voice changes. "Hey, lover, check your tank. I think there might be--"

Quiet. Suddenly the dark purple decays into grime. Mush floods in around him. Lupin flails, with the sudden realization that he can't breathe. His hands are gone, ending at the wrist and smearing everything with the taste of coins.

_ "Will you trouble your grandfather?" _

He thrashes wildly, but the colors don't clear. He can't even draw lines at this point, the smears have spread past that, all the way to every piece of him.

_ NononO NO noopleasepleaseplease NoNonN _

_ "O u i." _

Like...like, waking up to the smell of buttermilk pancakes. Lupin opens his eyes to starlight, dragging the breaths of it into him so weakly because it stings. It's cold, but he's being held to Goemon in the surf, floating on peppermint scent and the way clean clothes feel on his back and the softest blend of orange and purple dyes and all the things he shouldn't have. Jigen and Fujiko are somewhere nearby shouting, the marshmallow taste of their voices slowly coming closer. Goemon's saying something...asking...in Japanese.

Lupin holds up his hands shakily so the other can see, feeling like a traitor as he says, "I shouldn't have these."

And that's why sometimes, he feels he deserves when the smears come. He waves off the velvet strokes of Jigen's cigarette smoke, the featherlight prods of Fujiko's suggestive gaze, and even when Goemon brings cool focus to him, Lupin steps away.

Sometimes he's so tired of the ringing. Sometimes the smears bring a comfort of their own in a way that Lupin is too familiar with to reject, where it's green and black and coarse, and everything inside him is rotten, and maybe it always was. Maybe the smears are really what is truly there, and the ringing is what occludes it because Lupin is too fucked up in the head to realize. He drifts in it, lets the lines fall apart, lets his pieces scatter into slivers far off. The deepest imprint left upon his neck tightens, swallows the ringing whole until there's only black.

It's funny how near death there's no more upheavel. There's a moment of acceptance, a final conscious thought, a gaze into eternal rest. Into his grandfather's eyes. He wonders, if this is how _ he _ felt before his spotlight faded. Lupin can hope that he'd been genuine in his final words.

He hopes it wasn't terrible.

He hopes he himself can't remember if it was.

And the smears rise again, stretching out from within him, crushing his windpipe, and pressing the edges of a stairwall into his back, stabbing lines. And his limbs go limp with white noise. He can barely hear. Smell. See. Feel. Taste. Know which from which. Discern whether he deserves to ever know with _ eyes unable to appraise _.

The blacked out parts of film in his mind, he knows he was choking somewhere in there. Knows there's so much that happens underneath the overlay of shadow. He couldn't breathe-- make it stop

make it stop

make it stop

make it stop

make it END.

The ringing finds him.

Goemon's hands sweep fuscia to unsheath zantetsu, but Lupin puts his hands over Goemon's to stay the weapon.

"You don't have to," Lupin whispers, barely inhaling and clawing to remain within himself as the smears swarm his sinuses. "You never have to, y'know. This.... I know it's not real. I know it's nothing, okay? I'm the one who can't do anything with nothing."

"It is the duty of those who can," Goemon says, the tendrils of his voice wash and dilute the smears with shamisen chords, bleeding through Lupin's lungs and into the most folded over cavity deep within Lupin's chest, "to undertake what others cannot."

And, only assured in the case that most allows the event to be apocryphal, Lupin drowns? shatters? bleeds? blames? collides? remembers. Grieves.

But most certainly, Goemon wraps around him like down pinion and **r i n g s**. Just rings and rings and rings.

Like singing a song he's never heard before. Like biting into a hot meal on a wintry day. Like the last piece of a puzzle clicking into place. Like he simply knows _ how _ to.

Except along with it is a feeling like sunkissed yellow risen in his cheekbones, Lupin is suddenly hyperaware of another body draped protectively over his.

Somewhere within this renewed paradise, Goemon's Japanese nudges him. "With a mind unreliable, it's not so unexpected that you follow your heart."

It beams through him, and Lupin is too utterly exhausted to move. He'll be embarassed later. He won't be able to look Goemon in the eye for a while. He'll be so artless and bumbling that Jigen and Fujiko will watch. He'll be so tempted with sultry orange thoughts spilling over from his rapid pulse. He'll deny all of it. And he knows, Goemon will be patient, and remain.

"Yeah. Okay."

The old estate tucked into the Alps is what remained of his grandfather's empire; the First in name and line, had always worked alone, and had only started a family as what seemed like an afterthought upon facing the realization that he was growing old. The Dioscuri is what remains of his father's; the Second collected people just like he collected art, to do his bidding and to amass a system of protection around himself and his art pi e c es, and possibly, because he could never stand the idea of being alone.

As an adult, Lupin the Third is without an estate or intention of heir, without his own hoarded stashes or disciples, to show for himself. But he thinks he's got both his predecessors beat.

The household he's made is in three consistent faces. They're not followers or lackeys, as much as they're simply equals he trusts to get the job done. They all speak Japanese. And English. And Italian. And Russian. And Mandarin. And German. And Spanish. And teasing. And arguments. And laughter. And _ touch _. And trust. And gazes. And presence. And, ringing. And anything at all they choose, because what matters is that they speak on his level.

For the longest time, Lupin doesn't hear French.

And so, one day, he decides that it's high time he ought to.

(He, too, considers that maybe he really hasn't lost anything at all. That he's only ever gained and learned, and learned to gain better.

But he can't be a thief without a certain amount of greed.

What's wrong with taking a bit more now?)

This is the best time, perhaps, to talk more about that portrait.

Of any of the paintings lingering in the fine line between smear and ringing of his mind, Lupin has a single most favorite.

It's of a Japanese woman perched by a window, looking bashfully towards the painter as she leans awkwardly against the sill. It's obvious she doesn't quite know what to do with her hands, one curled into a loose fist against her jaw and the other holding fast to her lap. She's beaming. Younger than Lupin is now, dark brown eyes aglow with brilliant gusto and an unmistakable, irrevocable affection.

Love. She's in love.

Lupin christens tonight's hideout with it, decides to appreciate it in full with the others, decides tonight is as good a night as it could be. Tonight, they will end the Dioscuri. And, in preparation for the new chapter, Lupin hangs the portrait. For begetting new tradition. For luck. For the wistful hope of _ maybe _.

As a child, Lupin used to stare at this portrait, enchanted by every detail. The way the ends of her hair curled against her clavicle. The way her bottom lip plumped just enough to indicate she was biting it only slightly. The way she gazed, so full, that Lupin had attempted to see in everyday of his past and couldn't.

But her expression was one of the only things he'd ever seen clearly in his life, unaffected by the sprawl of invasive stimuli that gnawed onto the corners of his waking conscious. He knew it was because none of it was comparable to anything else that could have smeared and warped and defaced it. The same reason why he's never seen this woman anywhere but within this frame. She, and everything she radiated, were unmarrable.

It had been located in one dark storage closet his father outfitted with an intricate lock. It was such a specific shade of the ringing that had grasped Lupin, before his father dragged him out and tossed him down the stairwell. The next time he went searching for the closet, he found the door wide open, gutted of its contents. But the portrait remained sharp, lodged in Lupin's heart to this day.

A touch of freckled grey caresses his periphery as Goemon falls into stance beside him. A smooth stone shifting, bending the river ever so slightly with a shimmer.

"It might be better appreciated if hung somewhere with more lighting," Goemon mentions, words skipping across the air and emitting ripples.

He won't understand that the shadows always bend around the sturdy oak frame. That the woman's face remains unmarred and untouched no matter how many concepts flit across Lupin's conscious and sprawl over his jumbled hoarder's pile of synapse clicks. No, this portrait remains brighter even than the mountain stillness that embraces the mansion, than the golden attic of burning contents, than even the ringing that has always guided him. The placard is a golen plate drilled along the bottom of the frame, cool and everlasting under Lupin's thumb. It reads:

_ "All I need is this." _

"Lupin?" Goemon's voice is so gentle, Lupin's knees nearly buckle from the weight of his sincerity.

He pulls his hand back. Daffodils bloom upon each knuckle. "All she needs is this."

"And who is she?"

The curiosity isn't solely Goemon's. Jigen and Fujiko's gazes flit discreetly towards them, like fickle sunlight glimmering through the waver of leaves.

He has the sudden urge to ask Goemon if he thinks Lupin looks anything at all like the woman in the portrait. But he knows Goemon is only being kind.

None of them behold any of this.

So he shakes his head and smiles. "No one I've ever known."

When he tumbled backwards down the stairs, his vision had been so grainy green, his body so iced and agonized. So blotted out was the world, that Lupin took the portrait deep within him, covering it over and over with as many layers as he would wind of himself. So many slices, as many as it would take to push the **mush** out. So still he felt the pieces he left behind become something other than him, as frost crawling closer and closer within. Lupin clawed lines into lines, shrinking the patterns back. His father was upon him, pinning him down, pushing so hard he thought his spine would snap from his weight, and then he felt his throat close.

"You have only ever taken," the Second seethed and crumbled upon him, falling apart and building back up in a landslide over him. He was choking him. Lupin couldn't _ breathe _ . "You took her already. You _ took HER _."

His body was going numb, falling limp. Despite his eyes being wide open, Lupin's vision went violent black, and he folded himself. Folded himself over the smiling woman. Drew so many lines until he could only see scribbles, layers upon layers of which. _ She's not just yours! _ He thought, and took each stroke of each kanji, and made those into lines too.

So violent and so dark and mired were the smears upon him, that he didn't know what to make of the speck of light that appeared before him then. So disbelieving of the warmth that burst within his chest when the speck opened up, up, out, until he saw Pépère's spotlight flooding the room, that he thought he himself had finally died to meet his grandfather in heaven.

Then, the First spoke, in a tone like mountains being overturned, cracked by molten fires eating through each cloud in the sky; like the arrival of a god with a yen for smiting.

"Release my grandson. I won't repeat myself."

When his father's hands jerked back from his throat and he was able to breathe enough through the dark, the ringing thumbed across Lupin's eyelashes, steadying the his rattled, scattered, trembling pieces. He held the portrait close and hidden and submerged and protected. He would wait until the ringing was strong. He wanted to ask his grandfather all about it.

"**Pa** ?" the Second's voice was scattered, raw and rattled. It was the only time Lupin could remember his father ever sounding frightened. " **Are you here**?"

"This is what has become of you? My son." Pépère neared, circling around them with an unyielding, haunted stare. No applause followed him, the cellos had fallen to rest, and Lupin had never seen him maimed than in that moment. Later, older, he would realize what he'd been witness to was the First's heart shattering. "This is the bearing of my failure? This what I have pushed you to? Look at what you've done to your _ child _, my boy."

The Second glimpsed back at Lupin, eyes wild with burden. He said nothing, but Lupin still heard his voice like his father's hands were still upon him.

_ "Will you trouble your grandfather?" _

No. Lupin would never. Lupin hadn't _ meant _ to. He tried to speak, but he could still barely _ breathe _. He longed so badly to unfold and throw himself wholly into Pépère's arms, and run with him far away from this place, from his father, to anywhere the ringing could take them. They could do that. The First had faked his own death; he could do anything, and he would have the Third to help him.

"You will not be disappointed in me--" the Second grueled, mouth twisting and tearing madly around his teeth.

Too late the smears around him screamed that he noticed the gun in the Second's hand. Lupin choked on the coins in his throat, vision bursting with grime like spikes were being driven through.

"--_ anymore _!"

It was the second time Pépère died, but this death was real. And this real death-- it had been Lupin's fault.

It haunts him, in every breath, in every bone, in every inch of his guts, in his blood-- the blood paid forward to him from the prior bearers of the Lupin name, in the nimbleness of his hands (stolen, like so many things, from a time before him; only this he could never return), in the steps he takes towards the ringing, the steps he takes away from the mansion, in his father's eyes that he meets constantly, in the First's eyes that to this day he can't bring himself to meet, through his own eyes that see all of it over and over again, seeing nothing, seeing everything that the world tries to tell him is nothing, that he wishes could be the nothing they speak of rather than the nothing within him.

The worst imprint is not the one left in his throat, crushing and fitted to the shape of his father's pressure-sensitive artist hands wherein within each squeezing finger could be found a reason for the grudge held against him since birth; the reason for which the woman in the portrait has only ever been found in a portrait (yet another thing stolen Lupin's thieving nature was founded on upon his entry to the world). It is the one in his eyes that don't see as is. The scene that lingers at the edges of his vision, teeth of the past latched deep to the present and bleeding it out slowly. The wounds he remembers causing his grandfather. The ones he knows are his fault are a puncture in his heart that flush the world in enough color that he doesn't have to see it.

But now.

He feels the lines on his back-- the sour shape of stairs that bent into his bones and dragged against his skin as he tumbled down the steps where his father threw him. His throat swells inward until he can't breathe, vision flashing grime of green and black that curls around his teeth.

A crack splits across the Second's face.

"No," Lupin mutters as pieces of memories flip before him, throwing themselves between himself and his father's hands. He shuts them out. He already knows the pain of his father's hands.

What he could never handle was the immortalization of his grandfather's gaze that followed after.

This is the blacked out film, the darkest place, the deepest imprint, the **mush**, every line, each layer, each folding. He begins to pull it apart. Maybe it's the ringing. Maybe it's the smears.

Maybe it's all of it colliding together into the wish of _ maybe _ he'd hoped for.

And then, instead of himself that begins to fall to pieces, it's his father, standing before him, bleeding out and run ragged and gnarling expletives at him, and the lines draw slices over him, lines that form spiderweb cracks in a glass veneer. Lupin blinks, and more lines appear. His father's mouth falls away, and someone else is speaking French to him. It's French, isn't it?

It's French. But the accent is…Belgian?

Lupin asks, as he does each time, carefully, "Pa...are you here?"

"_ Oui _."

See...the one consistance, the sole truth, the unwavering unchanging unfluctuation about Lupin the Second

is that he was a liar.

Lupin pulls the trigger on his walther, and they end up shooting at the same time.

It ran in the family.

Two faces, the space between a shattering vase. The second half of the twin faces crumbles to dust.

Lupin doesn't realize his own knees are giving until he's floating suddenly, looking up at the drift of sky and ceiling.

He knows, ringing bright and flowing into him, and it _ hurts _ but he can face it now. "Goemon, is my father--?"

"The Dioscuri are finished. Lupin, you must endure." It's so far.... Warbled, distant, scared. Scared of what?

"Goemon," he calls out, reaching, flailing for it. He can find it. He can face it now. _ He's _ not scared anymore. "Goemon."

A hand catches his in the deep, dark flood of blotted clarity. "I am here. Remain with me. Remain _ awake _."

He can somewhat make out Goemon's silhouette above him.

Now he remembers. _ Is the sky always blue? _

The ringing is bursting beautifully, and there is no more pain.

"Goemon, why didn't you kill me?" There's no grudge. Only peace and curiosity. Lupin hopes Goemon knows that.

"There was no worthless object to cut." Goemon's voice is rough, fervent. The ringing has never been more pure. "Only a man who deserved to see more of the world. Lupin, I--"

But as his voice washes out, Lupin can't see anything anymore either.

There's only a sort of, embrace...which Lupin figures he should honorably accept.

_ "Release my grandson. I won't repeat myself." _

_ \--and he was able breathe-- _

Lupin could remember now.

"Do not blame your father," the First had said this in Japanese, rose petals flooding up through his teeth, over his lips. The glow of him flickering. "Arsène. I'm so sorry I didn't see before…. I should have known. The signs were all there…. It was _ my _ sight that was faulty, never yours."

"Pépère," Lupin begged as he choked down tears. "I.... What do I _ do _?"

"Do you hear your ringing?"

"It's far. It's…really, really far."

"Then follow it. Let it be loud." He gripped Lupin's shoulder, and his gaze was laden with fiery pride. His final words were spoken in French: "Lupin the Third, you will make a hellacious thief."

Then, night fell upon his eyes. The First's spotlight shrunk and went quiet. The birds stopped singing from his hand and it fell limp, fallen from final flight, and it would be the only time Lupin would feel stolen from, robbed of the whole world that night, of applause and a unrivaled orchestra of cellos, of heated magma that ran from the earth's ancient core through to a master phantom thief's movement only to go cold now, of a force both unstoppable and immovable. Of the very best grandfather.

Lupin knows that Dioscuri consituents burned the mansion down not long after that event, but the way he left it-- the heavy front doors hanging open, Pépère's cold body left alone-- it would linger with him for the rest of his life.

For a terrible while, the ringing abandoned him completely. He didn't know how long he spent in roiling in fragments of who he thought he should or could be.

But he did what the First told him to do. Once he found it again, he let it be loud, and it never led him astray.

Lupin opens his eyes, and knows by airy starlight in his chest, that Goemon is near.

"Is it you?" he mumbles, cringing at the dull ache throughout his body, pulsing from his abdomen. A sheep nudges its head onto his shoulder.

Goemon leans into his vision. "Lupin, do not strain yourself."

"Are you the ringing after all? You make it so loud…. I don't get it. Lately I feel like I'm just following _ you _."

"I am not the ringing," Goemon says quietly, but there's an odd smile on his face that he tries to hide from Lupin by letting his hair fall forward as he turns away. "You are supposedly adept at puzzles. How have you not solved this yet?"

"Oh, sure, salt the wound, why don't you." Lupin averts his eyes, trying not to pout.

"I can tell you," Goemon offers.

"Don't patronize me. I'm Lupin the Third, okay?"

"I am well aware."

But he continues watching him, and looks entirely too amused for Lupin's comfort.

The world shifts then, with the arrival of Goemon's face suddenly so close to Lupin's that he can count the rhythm of Goemon's breaths, that his ears pulse to life with lilac bloodrush.

Goemon leans so deep onto him until their noses touched, clinked together like champagne glasses. Buzzing all throughout his body, resonating in the breaths from Goemon's lungs that surge his veins with sparks, like the ringing is alive inside of him. He can kind of see a few excessive shades on the edge of his vision, but they remain only towards the edge. Nothing smearing. He exhales warily, unsure if he can get the air back if he lets it all go.

"May I offer a hint?" Goemon whispers, and it's crippling. He envelopes him, shielding him from the world in a blanket of clarity and Lupin presses up against him as the ground beneath dissipates. "Lupin?"

Lupin stammers, "O-okay."

The kiss that follows is tender, soothing, and unhurried as Goemon opens this untrodden path between them. Lupin hopes he remembers the way on his own for later, but for now, he lets Goemon lead. Goemon tastes safe and wild. His hair falls over Lupin's face and his smell is of linen and cut grass and moonlight. Lupin wants more, closer, all, now. He wants to wrap himself up in Goemon, and vice versa. But his hand barely budges against the strands of Goemon's dipping ink. Seeing this, Goemon grasps it, lacing their fingers, binding them together. It rings. It all rings. And it feels, it feels so complete. It feels...

Like falling upside down into water, in reverse.

Like speaking a lie, only to have it be proven true after all.

Like the glow of the sole star in a light-polluted skyline.

Like an attic that once chimed gold.

Like all the tells Fujiko gives when she's about to make a play against him.

Like the intense, rare delight of Jigen's crosshair gaze.

Like being old enough to realize he'd inherited his grandfather's hands.

Like the collapse of air in the wake of zantetsu's swing.

Like...

_ "All I need is this." _

Oh.

So _ that's _\--

  


**fini**


End file.
